


blame it on love

by pallasjoanna



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Pining!Tsukki, possible trigger warnings for emetophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7306765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasjoanna/pseuds/pallasjoanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kei doesn't start coughing up flowers after his blocking practice with Kuroo in the third gym.</p><p>But then again, it <i>is</i> Kuroo, so maybe it was just a matter of time.</p><p>--</p><p>Hanahaki : an illness wherein the patient coughs up flower petals, borne out of one-sided love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blame it on love

Kei doesn’t start coughing out flowers after his blocking practice with Kuroo in the third gym, with the scent of sweat and salonpas in the air, the squeak of sneakers against the floor, and the overhead lights stark against the night outside.

He also doesn’t start coughing out flowers when Kuroo personally asks him for his number by one of the storage sheds, the lack of other people in the area making the whole affair seem terribly illicit. He only feels—past the confusion at what a third year from Tokyo would want from him—a sudden, inexplicable urge to map out the expanse of Kuroo’s back with his hands on that humid summer day.

Kuroo waves at him from beyond the bus windows when they leave. The lightest of itches makes itself known at the back of Kei’s throat.

The itch is gone as soon as it came, and he catches his breath like he’s just missed a step on a giant staircase. Then Kei snorts, drinks a large gulp of water just to be sure.  Hanahaki only happens to people when it’s love, hopeless and unrequited, and calling what he feels as love is stretching it beyond the point of incredulity.

It’s only been a few days. He admires Kuroo for his skills in volleyball and the fact that he taught Kei what he knows, even if it’s for reasons of his own. He admires Kuroo’s wit when he can serve back retorts and astute observations to Kei, even if the sharpness of it leaves him unsettled and vunerable.

When he finds himself thinking of Kuroo for one too many weeks afterwards, Kei can even generously call it a crush. He’d still rather dig himself a hole before he so much as breathes a hint of that, even to Yamaguchi, but it’s not love.

It’s not love, but if people like Bokuto and Hinata were hurricanes, then Kuroo is a rising tide and a lightning strike all at once, bringing Kei from point A to B with hindsight being the only clue as to how he got there. It starts with a cat picture from Kuroo’s end, then two, then Kei’s sparse replies spur it on to a regular occurrence that continues even through the end of Kei’s first year.

And here he is, at point B:

Kei is sufficiently distracted from the homework already splayed out across his bed. It’s hot enough that his limbs sink into the mattress, pleasantly lethargic. While it’s all too tempting to let himself sleep, he really needs to do his schoolwork – just not right at this very second, when he feels like a frog done in a slow boil. He busies himself instead by browsing through random pages on the internet, occasionally replying to the message notifications that pop out at the corner of his screen.

On this particular day, he’s keeping up a conversation with both the Karasuno volleyball club group chat and Kuroo, the former’s agenda of the day being the running tally and photo collection of all the times Hinata has received a ball to the face. Kei has a sizeable contribution on his phone.

Kuroo, on the other hand—well, it’s not quite a conversation yet; he’s always seemed content to text Kei running commentaries of his day even if Kei is silent for most of it.

Kuroo [11:01] At least you aren’t in Tokyo right now.

Kei feels his mouth pull down into a scowl. ‘ _What do you mean?_ ’ he finally sends.

Kuroo [11:03] If Miyagi is hot as fuck right now, you’ll be a deeply fried French fry when you’re in Tokyo.

Kuroo [11:04] Then again, there goes your dreams of becoming the saltiest person alive.

A snort escapes him before he can stop it.

Me [11:06] Are you always this savage towards your underclassmen?

Me [11:06] And go drink water.

Kuroo [11:10] Looking for a 7/11 right now, Tsukki-sama~

Kuroo [11:15] I’d say only towards Lev most of the time, but Yaku’s already doing that for me.

Kuroo [11:16] And Kenma dishes out the most savage burns. No lie.

Me [11:17] I’m surprised you’re still alive.

Kuroo [11:17] It’s hot as fuck Tsukki. Kindly stop burning your elders.

Kuroo [11:18] Aren’t 7/11s supposed to be everywhere???

Me [11:18] Are you sure you’re not just lost in your own city?

Kuroo [11:19] That’s Bokuto, not me.

Kuroo [11:21] Wait

Me [11:22] Finally found one?

Kuroo [11:23] No, but

Kuroo [11:23] they probably sell water here right?

Kuroo [11:24] Oho remind me to show you this place the next time you’re in the area.

Me [11:25] I’m dying from the anticipation.

Kuroo [11:27] Woah, easy on the salt, Tsukki.

Kuroo [11:30] Here

The picture that Kuroo sends takes several seconds to load, but when it does, it feels like a punch under Kei’s ribs.

For someone as… _someone_ as Kuroo, Kei was surprised to learn that Kuroo isn’t in the habit of taking selfies of himself—or at least sending those hypothetical selfies to Kei. He means, yes, they are selfies in the technical sense, but even if Kuroo is clearly holding the camera, his hand or his physically unlawful hair or his infuriating smirk present in some corner of the photo, he’s clearly never the focus of his photos with the Nekoma VBC, candid shots with his family, or even the ones with the random cats. It’s like he takes the picture to say _hey, look at this_ to whoever might be watching.

 _Hey, look at this_ , Kuroo’s also saying to Kei now, but all Kei can look at is him.

Kuroo must have crouched down in the street to get this angle: only half his face is actually in the frame, but it’s dizzyingly, intimately close to the camera since Kei supposes Kuroo wanted him to look at the overhead cake shop sign instead. The sun in a patch clear bright blue sky – the kind of blue that appears when the weather promises to deliver hell—shines in the corner of the photo, casting a warm backlight over Kuroo’s skin. It brings out flecks of gold in his eyes that Kei hasn’t seen before, and it makes his smile seem softer than it should be, than it’ll ever be for Kei.

Point B: Kei – breathless from a warmth that has nothing to do with the weather, from a twist in his gut that has everything to do with Kuroo, from a building pressure in his throat that just _aches_. And then his hands fly up to his mouth, horrified.

There is something to be said about his tendency to gravitate towards the quietest places in public. In theory, those are the last places where anyone would bother Kei as he’s listening to music or just thinking about how he’s annoyed at a lot of things (mostly himself), but that’s how Kei becomes all too familiar with the sight of people barging in, shaking from the coughs wracking their bodies. It always takes them a while to notice Kei, and when they do, it’s always with relief. Because Kei is a stranger who has nothing to do with the petals they just vomited onto ground—bright, beautiful, and pathetic.

Kei looks numbly at the soft yellow petals in the palms of his hands and says, out loud, in the quiet of his room, “Fuck.”

 

*

 

The next few weeks are Kei’s own personal hell.

Hanahaki, he decides, is the worst. There’s no use hiding it from the volleyball team, especially when he’s captain and therefore, he can’t easily explain away why he bolts out of the gym when he’s in the middle of a coughing fit. He never says it out loud, but the looks on his teammates’ faces tell him all he needs to know. Hinata’s assumption that Kei was dying at first from some sort of terminal illness is only marginally better. Kageyama has the gall to look somewhere between pitying and concerned, just because he’s never had to experience hanahaki and now gets to skip off into volleyball sunset with Hinata.

Kei never says that out loud too. At least he’s become a somewhat better person since first year.

Or maybe not, because the first thing he does when he decides he should be doing something is to stop replying to Kuroo’s messages. Full stop. Cold turkey. His fingers still twitch towards his phone when it lights up. The air seems to burn whenever it’s Kuroo’s name on the screen, and he swipes away the notifications for his messages before he can read them.

The coughing and the flowers get especially worse after that.

Kei is hunched over the sink in the school bathroom, with Yamaguchi’s hand rubbing circles into his back, and he’s torn in between telling his best friend to just leave him alone and not saying anything at all. They have an upcoming match they need to practice for. God, this is embarrassing and pathetic, and he sends a silent apology to all those people he’s witnessed doing the same thing as he is right now.

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi starts, infinite patience ready in his voice, which is good because Kei is planning to be stubborn about this. “This isn’t really working. Have you tried talking to him?”

Kei scowls, not bothering to ask how Yamaguchi even knows that it’s a boy. He hasn’t kept it a secret from him that he texts – had texted Kuroo for almost a year and a half now, substantially longer than what Kei would bother with for most. Assuming that it’s Kuroo may not have been a wild logical leap. “There’s no—“ he says before he starts retching into the sink again, more soft yellow petals joining the pile on the clinical white ceramic. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“ _Tsukki._ ”

Kei wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, his chest heaving. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he repeats. “These stupid things made that perfectly clear. I’ll deal with this.”

Yamaguchi raises an eyebrow. “Your way of dealing with this is utter crap.”

 _Tell me something I don’t know_. Kei gets out of the bathroom before his body gets tempted to start the whole ordeal all over again.

Hanahaki is the worst, heaping insult upon injury, shoving in his face the reminder that as Kei is Having Feelings, Kuroo doesn’t feel the same way. And the clincher of this whole thing is that he is so sick already of the taste of petals on his tongue, but out of the two ways to be cured of hanahaki, the only one he can do happens to be the one he’s spectacularly failing at.

Why does it have to be Kuroo anyway? His sense of humor utilizes too many obscure memes and godawful puns every odd hour. His hair would be a picture under the dictionary entry for ‘fictional’ or ‘unlawful’. He texts at the strangest hours in the night, a testimony to a college student’s fucked up sleeping schedule, and it wakes Kei up because he’s never been a heavy sleeper and he’s developed some sort of Pavlovian response to the chime or vibration of his phone. He has this infuriating way of seeing through Kei even from 360 kilometers away, and it’s a wonder that this thing has lasted as long as it has before Kei decided to royally fuck it up.

But Kuroo Tetsurou is such a good person, and fuck, this isn’t helping Kei get over him at all, if Kuroo is even the type of person that one can get over in the first place. His phone receives a new notification then and there (‘ _Look, I don’t know what I did wrong but could we just talk—_ ‘), and he can’t swipe it away fast enough.

Well. He hears that time and distance always works wonders. And worst case scenario, at least nobody ever died from this literal manifestation of a broken heart.

 

*

 

A week before their next Tokyo training camp, Akaashi, of all people, calls Kei. Kei doesn’t usually hear from him except for special occasions – birthdays, Christmas, the like, and at one time, a drunken phone call that he still isn’t convinced actually happened – so that, coupled with the timing, just makes it seem a bit too suspicious.

“ _Can’t I call you without any ulterior motive, Tsukishima-san?_ ” Akaashi says in response.

The older student sounds unfazed by how Kei snorts in disbelief at that. “Of course you can,” Kei says. “Are you though?”

_“I was calling you to congratulate Karasuno on your match against Seijou.”_

“And?”

_“I may have heard something that I’d like to confirm.”_

Kei’s heart jumps to his throat, about to deny what Akaashi’s going to say before he even gets it out because even Kei knows at this point what he’s about to say. Their match with Seijou was overall good, but hanahaki had messed up the timing of a few of Kei’s blocks. When the match had ended and they were all shaking hands through the net, there were a few petals scattered over Karasuno’s side of the court – bright, bold, and accusing.

He doesn’t remember seeing anyone familiar from Nekoma or Fukurodani, so— “Don’t tell me it was Hinata.” Kei doesn’t actually think it’s Hinata—it’s less because he’s confident in Hinata’s secret-keeping skills and more because he’s confident in Kozume’s.

“ _No, it had something to do with a friend of a Nekoma former manager’s cousin who happened to be there at the match_.” Akaashi pauses, letting the silence fill in the blanks. Kei doesn’t want to know. He’s had some idea of Nekoma’s and Fukurodani’s intertwined social dynamics from Kuroo, but this was just ridiculous. He swallows back a rising cough as Akaashi continues, “ _So, how long have you had hanahaki?_ ”

Kei laughs dryly. “I think you already know, Akaashi-san. Did Bokuto-san or Kuroo put you up to this?”

“ _Kuroo may be Bokuto’s best friend, but he is my friend too_.” Akaashi’s voice is quiet, but no less laced with steely conviction. “ _As are you. I’ve only experienced hanahaki secondhand, so I’m not asking for much. All I’m asking is for you to start talking to him again_.”

“As if he—“ Kei is cut off by a short, sharp loud cough. Soft yellow flowers. He throws them into the garbage can.

 _As if he cares_ , Kei was about to say, but he knows that his brain likes to run off with the most scathing truths and untruths. This one is one of the many blatant untruths he’s been telling himself, a sort of preemptive strike for when Kuroo finally finds out that Kei has been vomiting flowers because of him.

Now that he’s laid that out in his head, it all feels ridiculous. Kei is so tired of fucking around.

“I’m fine,” he says in response to Akaashi’s concerned noise. Then, “Fine. I’ll talk to him. Is he – is he coming to training camp?”

“ _Ah. Kou – Bokuto says he’s been swamped with college work, so he can’t. But you will talk to him, yes?_ ”

Kei swallows. “Yeah.”

“ _In advance – good luck_ ,” Akaashi says in goodbye before he drops the call.

 

*

 

Kuroo [16:12] Look, I don’t know what I did wrong but could we just talk sometime?

Kuroo [17:55] Tsukki

Kuroo [17:59] Tsukishima

_You didn’t do anything wrong—_

_Sorry for being an asshole but—_

_I have hanahaki, and honestly, I understand if you don’t want to –_

_Can we—_

[Message draft deleted.]

 

*

 

Kei manages to be continually amazed at the universe’s propensity for chaos. Specifically, it’s propensity to fuck things up. Even more specifically, it’s running list on How To Fuck Tsukishima Kei Up.

Because Kei lets himself hope that everything is going to go as smoothly as can be. Because on this particular training camp, the day seems to be perfect enough, not too hot, less receives to the face, the whole team coming together, making him proud as a captain. Because when he rewards the team with an early water break mid-afternoon, Bokuto, from the other side of the gym, hollers, deafening everyone within a ten-meter radius, speeds across court with a Doppler effect that leaves Kei winded, and glomps someone at the doorway.

Because that someone happens to be Kuroo Tetsurou, looking even more disheveled than usual, and it’s been several weeks since Kei has talked to him, several months since Kei has seen him in person, so something – _everything_ slams into his chest like a freight train and roots him frozen in his spot in the gym.

Helplessly, he meets Akaashi’s eyes, and the other just shrugs, as surprised as Akaashi ever will be. He’s aware of his team looking at him, of the way Kuroo spots him and fixes him with a stare that makes him feel like running a mile, like his chest is about to burst with _something_.

Yamaguchi says, “Tsukki—“ just as Kei is striding forward because like hell he’s going to have another fit of hanahaki in front of all these people. Kuroo shrugs out of Bokuto's grip, makes an aborted half-step towards him, but Kei just strides out of the gym with the most minimal of eye contact.

Kuroo finds him in front of the same storage shed where two years ago, this whole thing arguably started.

“So.” Unlike two years ago, Kuroo keeps a respectable distance. Kei still can’t quite meet his eyes, wringing his hands in front of him. “Tsukishima.“

Somehow, the use of his full last name instead of that damnable nickname stings like a slap. It finally makes him look at Kuroo. Kuroo’s expression is a near perfect poker face, and that stings less only because Kei himself is struggling with it.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Kei says first, throat tight around the syllables as if flowers would come out of his mouth again if he didn’t restrain himself. “I was an asshole, I get that, and I get if you don’t want anything to do with me anymore—“

“If _I_ don’t want anything to do with you anymore?” Kei flinches. Kuroo’s poker face is gone, replaced by a baffled confusion that leaves Kei spinning in his own head. “I thought you were the one who didn’t want anything to do with me. It’s been weeks, and—“ Kuroo shakes his head. “Anyway, apology accepted, but that’s not why I ditched class to come here in the first place.”

“You ditched class?”

Kuroo nods, an indecipherable look in his face again, but this time, it’s intense instead of carefully blank. “Because I realized something. About why you stopped talking to me. I knew Akaashi knew, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. So—” He runs a hand through his hair. “You had hanahaki, didn’t you?”

Kuroo says it with so much fact and casualness that it sounds so final. There isn’t any air in a vacuum. Sound can’t travel in space.

Kei can’t quite hear his own voice when he says, already resigned, “Yes.”

“Sorry.” Kuroo takes a step closer, stops when Kei takes a step backward into the wall. “It took me a while to figure out, so I’m sorry to have kept you waiting—“

Kei barks out a laugh, just on this side of resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. Figures. Kuroo would try to be nice about this. “Look, I don’t need a speech, Kuroo. Just reject me, and then we can go on our merry way.” He sneers. “Water break ends in ten minutes. That’s more than enough time, don’t you think?”

Again with the baffled confusion. “Tsukishima, what the _fuck_? Who the fuck—“

When Kuroo takes a step closer, Kei has run out of space between himself and the wall behind him. He’s now a good deal taller than Kuroo at this point, and even without the advantage of height, Kuroo makes Kei look at him with his presence alone. Kuroo’s hands settle tentatively on Kei’s forearms. Kei doesn’t have the willpower to pull away, but he hopes that at least, his stupid flowers won’t fuck this up more than it already is.

“Isn’t that the point of this?” Kei asks as numbly as he can.

Kuroo throws his hands up into the air. “Okay, alright, clearly we’re not on the same page.” He taps his foot on the ground, chewing his bottom lip a bit ragged, and Kei wants to smooth it away.

Then a heartbeat later, Kuroo asks, “Tsukishima, when was the last time you vomited flowers?”

“ _What_?” Kei doesn’t know why Kuroo is still dancing around the topic like this. “Just skip the bullshit already because I—“

And then what Kuroo is asking, his previous words now placed in a different context, finally fall into place.

There are only two ways to be cured of hanahaki: to get over it, or to finally have your feelings requited, and Kei has aggressively pursued the former in a misguided sense to stop himself from hurting. Because Kuroo—Kuroo would never—

“Not today. Last night, I think. At dinner,” Kei whispers, as if saying it any louder will break this strange spell, or somehow wake the both of them up. “You. Did you just—“

“Me.” Kuroo smiles wide and slowly, and Kei gets that breathless, punch in-the-gut sensation again, this time without the sensation of flowers choking him. “I was eating ramen because I’m but a broke college student, and I was wondering how I was supposed to studying for two long quizzes next week. And then I thought ‘what would Tsukishima say about this?’ Nothing, since we weren’t talking.

“And it hurt, you know, realizing that I missed your snark and your encyclopedic dinosaur obsession—“ (“It’s not,” Kei halfheartedly protests.) “—but most of all, I just missed talking to you. I missed you, and somehow that's how I knew I was in love with you. I was kinda prepared to wake up this morning while vomiting flowers, you know, and when I didn't, I just had to come see you.”

And again. “I’m in love with you, Tsukishima.”

Before Kuroo can properly cradle Kei’s jaw, Kei presses his hands over his to keep him against his skin, his own personal anchor because this still doesn’t quite feel real.

But it is. This might be. “I just realized it last night, Tsukki,” he says again. “I kept you waiting, didn’t I?”

“You’re such an asshole.” Kei laughs breathlessly. “I’m such an asshole.”

“Like I said, apology accepted. And at least we’re here now, right?”

Kuroo doesn’t feel quite real yet, the distance and the time still greater than this little frozen moment by an isolated storage shed, but Kuroo is eager to prove otherwise. Kei feels like he’s the only person in the world with how Kuroo is looking at him. He finds that he can’t shy away from it. It’s like Kuroo is saying for once, ‘ _hey, look at me_.’

Kuroo draws closer to Kei like it’s gravity. The decent weather starts to feel warm and stifling as sparks run along the points of contact between their skins.

And Kei doesn’t know how first kisses are supposed to go because he doesn’t quite believe the movies. He closes his eyes at the last minute, their teeth clack together once, and Kei’s glasses keep smooshing against Kuroo’s face. Do first kisses involve this much spit? Why is air even necessary to biological functions? Kuroo laughs, a short breathy thing as he chases after Kei’s lips again.

And maybe it’s the heady feeling of a first kiss, or the elation at the fact that he doesn’t have to vomit flowers anymore (because seriously, it’s the grossest thing ever), or just Kuroo Tetsurou, but Kei thinks that maybe, just maybe, this could work.

 

*

 

**[bonus:]**

 

“Kuroo?”

“Yeah?”

“Water break is over.”

“And?”

“We are _not_ making out in a storage shed.”

“Come on, live a little, Tsukki.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Tsukishima's flowers are yellow camellias, which mean 'longing' in Hanakotoba  
> \- Look, the world needs more krtsk with pining!Tsukki so I hoped to deliver.  
> \- Yeah, Kageyama and Hinata realized they were in love with each other at around the same time, the lucky bastards.  
> \- Akaashi has been a witness to Bokuto suffering from Hanahaki, and it stops when Akaashi thinks to himself that he'd like to know whom Bokuto was in love with and give them a piece of his mind because at least Akaashi would have the decency to return Bokuto's feelings if ever it's directed at him and -- oh. Oh.  
> \- Title comes from 'Black Roses Red' by Alana Grace
> 
> oh my god take this away so i can study for my exam tomorrow
> 
>  
> 
> [ tumblr ](http://pallasjoannas.tumblr.com)


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